Alex Henderson

The Culture Wars

Sex Columnist Dan Savage Slams GOProud for Endorsement of Mitt Romney



By Alex Henderson
RealmNoir, June 21, 2012

Back in 1994, when he was running for the United States Senate, Republican Mitt Romney vowed that he would be to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights and sought the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans. The Christian Right absolutely cringed; as the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson crowd saw it, there was no room for social liberalism in the Republican Party.  But that was before Romney sought the GOP presidential nomination, which meant pandering to the Christian Right at every turn. And the new Mitt Romney not only opposes gay marriage—he favors a constitutional amendment that would outlaw it nationwide (so much for “states’ rights”). However, some people love to vote against their own social interests, and that includes GOProud.

This week, GOProud (a gay Republican organization that was founded in 2009 by former Log Cabin members Jimmy LaSalvia and Christopher R. Barron) endorsed Romney for president. And Dan Savage, the outspoken, openly gay sex columnist who writes Savage Love, responded by angrily denouncing GOProud as “house faggots” (a play on the derogatory term “house negro”). Savage has never been one to mince words; he calls it as he sees it—and while Savage’s rhetoric can be harsh at times, his basic point is absolutely correct: GOProud are endorsing a presidential candidate who stabs the gay community in the back.
 
Savage once told Keith Olbermann: “GOProud isn’t a pro-gay rights organization—they’re an organization of gay quislings and useful idiots that help to window-dress the Republican Party, which is really still rabidly anti-gay to its core.” Are all Republicans rapidly anti-gay? No, but let’s be honest: a good many of them are. The fact that someone as stridently anti-gay as Rick Santorum got as far as he did in the GOP presidential primaries speaks volumes about the power that the Christian Right continues to have in the Republican Party.
 
GOProud’s endorsement of Romney comes not long after President Barack Obama came out in support of gay marriage. Of course, the fact that Obama took that position doesn’t mean that GOProud are obligated to endorse his bid for reelection; same-sex marriage is not the only issue that gay voters are concerned about. But did GOProud have to endorse a flip-flopping opportunist who went from supporting gay rights to pandering to the militantly anti-gay Christian Right? If GOProud wanted to endorse a pro-gay rights fiscal conservative, they could have endorsed Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson (who supports gay marriage but takes the states-rights position on that issue). While the ex-Republican and former governor of New Mexico is fiscally conservative, he is generally liberal on social issues—and like the late Barry Goldwater, Johnson has no use for the Christian Right. Instead, GOProud endorsed someone who hasn’t hesitated to pander to homophobes.
 
Log Cabin, as of June 21, has yet to endorse Romney. Hopefully, they won’t.
 
In 2004, Log Cabin refused to endorse George W. Bush’s bid for reelection because of his support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; Log Cabin’s Patrick Guerriero asserted, “Writing discrimination into our Constitution violates conservative and Republican principles.” Log Cabin took a principled stand in 2004, demonstrating that they were more interested in ideas than party affiliation. But in 2012, one cannot say the same thing about GOProud.
 

Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, Billboard, Spin, XBIZ, Creem, The Pasadena Weekly and a long list of other well-known publications. He can be followed on Twitter @alexvhenderson.



Sex columnist Dan Savage (above) has slammed GOProud for its endorsement of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.